No. If I had money to spend on media, “affordable legal streaming services” would NOT stop me from pirating. Broad availability of DRMless media purchases would.

We have several major social media banned here, and they’re still popular. All a ban would do would be teaching people what VPNs are… As well as exposing a lot of them to malware, because most people would not be doing research and instead of legitimate, charity-run free censorship evasion tools, they’d be using shady apps from the top of Play Store search results.

If the ban comes from “up top”, people’s desire to use it will not suddenly disappear. If the people decide to leave en masse on their own - now that’d make an impact.

Yes, absolutely! But that wasn’t the point - rather that the spyware ones are popular for some reason, and thus can serve as a sad example of “low-hanging fruit to make an example of”.

(TBH I don’t get the need for a separate app in general, seems gimmicky, I just use a normal calendar)

The only solution to that is permanent airplane mode (on an OS you can trust to do so) and just not having the phone on you most of the time.

I’ll remove the DCM module from the vehicle before bringing it in.

Why don’t you remove it right now then?

A similar argument I hear is “If they want me, they will find and arrest me no matter my precautions”.

Kinda yes… But why are you talking about threat models that include someone deliberately hunting you down? We are not high-ranking dissidents or criminals that they would put effort and money into finding. Our concern is passive surveillance - maybe the collected info doing us a disservice (like being leaked for scammers or sold to an evil ex), maybe even something mundane getting flagged and us being arrested just to serve as an example.

Yeah, that would be less worrisome, hope this really is the case here.

I thought that was because everyone just bought $3 off-brand ones on Amazon.

I did buy a pair of wireless headphones, but the earbuds are staying wired. The headphones have a large, easy-to-replace battery that lasts a couple of weeks easily - while earbuds don’t. Some people might be inconvenienced by having to charge another device. Plus, Bluetooth doesn’t have the same audio quality - not as important for me, but might be for some people.

That’s just my association with the word “ban” - blocking, because that’s what I usually experienced.

It is the free, easy way to get an SSL cert (plus automated renewals). Without it, maybe HTTPS wouldn’t have been so omnipresent.

Yes, that was exactly my point. You would not treat any mail service like they would cover you during your unprotected use, and Proton is not an exception. So I don’t understand why people are taking issue with them cooperating with LE - but I take issue with some other qualities.

I guess the issue here is overselling the safety of the service. Wouldn’t rely on them encrypting the mail for you, for example. It’s probably fine if you treat it just like you would any other email service - assuming you’re fine with being unable to use a mail client at all on the free plan and using it in a weird roundabout way on the paid plans.

Here quite a few of the popular social media are banned. They’re still popular but now every schoolkid, housewife and grandpa knows what a VPN is. Every time I hear such news, I am afraid of crackdowns on censorship evasion in those places too…

I don’t see how most men would even find that out. Underwear is too intimate of a topic to open up about to the opposite sex.

Shoes are the most obnoxious things to shop for. Buying what you know makes total sense.

Yes, I am aware of such technology - they announced similar capabilities in our existing surveillance system. I know that it is most likely not as advanced as China’s, because that’s how it usually is here. However, it is not clear just how good it is in practice - at least in some cases, they’ve been overselling it (at least in regards to recognizing obstructed faces). So I am not sure just how dangerously accurate said gait recognition is, especially since they have much better facial recognition to depend on.

Yeah, but I don’t see the point of driving here at all.

Samourai was a Bitcoin wallet attempting to improve the currency’s privacy. Its devs were arrested this year.

Localmonero was a platform where people could post listings for buying or selling Monero without KYC. There was also an identical sister site Agoradesk for Bitcoin. They abruptly shut down this year, probably afraid of similar prosecution (it happened pretty soon after the Samourai case).

Chainalysis is a company that US government works with, attempting to track and deanonymize crypto transactions. Recently a presentation of theirs leaked, disclosing some of their methods (which were very interesting for the Monero community in particular).

Depends on how advanced the surveillance systems are. Yeah, I would consider driving to be impossible to do anonymously - but when it comes to walking or using public transport, depends. I am not sure just how well they can track a person with a covered face on those.